


Sister Winter

by LaVieEnRose



Series: The One Where Justin Loses His Hearing [87]
Category: Queer as Folk (US)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Chronic Illness, Depression, F/F, Family Drama, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pneumonia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-06
Updated: 2018-12-06
Packaged: 2019-09-12 19:45:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16878045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LaVieEnRose/pseuds/LaVieEnRose
Summary: Molly's having a hard time going back to normal after the events of "Pause" and "Stop."





	Sister Winter

Justin's the one who told me what was going on with his immune system, back when it all started. 

**So they have to take me off my anticonvulsant right away,** he said. He was pacing the apartment while he talked to me. Brian, he'd told me, was at the pharmacy, picking up supplies or whatever. **So I'm probably going to be off the grid for like a week.**

I was in my dorm, surrounded by study guides for my physics midterm and cliff notes of four books I was supposed to have read. **You're going to be having seizures for a week?**

My roommate yelled, “Hey, Molly's doing sign language!” out our door, and like three people came in to gawk at me. It was this running game on my floor, catch Molly signing! Never mind that, you know, she was trying to have a fucking conversation. They wanted to look at how cute and quirky my signing was. Imagine if they'd known I was talking about fucking seizures.

 **That's the plan,** he said. **It's been a couple months since I scared the shit out of Brian. We were getting bored.**

**How the fuck are you going to be safe? You should wear a helmet.**

**I really should wear a helmet. No, Brian's not going to let me be upright anyway.**

**Kinky.**

**One must hope.**

**I don't even fucking know what to say,** I said. 

People think I'm some sort of expert at this, but the thing is, when I was growing up, Justin was healthy. Even after he got hurt and he started having seizures, everyone sheltered me from it for such a long time. It wasn't until he started losing his hearing when I was fourteen that anybody even fucking thought to clue me in to what was going on to my own fucking brother, and not until I came back here for college that anyone started looking at me like a fucking adult who deserves to be told things while they're happening.

 **I'm going to be fine,** Justin said. **It's going to be a shitty week and then I'll be fine.**

**What about this immune system thing?**

“God, this is so cool,” my roommate's friend said. 

**That's why I'm gonna be locked in here like fucking Rapunzel for a while. They're giving me meds to boost my white count, in a week or two I'll be good as new.**

**Okay, um, I have finals coming up, and this paper, but I can talk to my—**

He furrowed his brow. **Molly, you're fine, I don't need anything from you. You keep doing your shit, and Brian's going to text you through all of this and keep you updated, okay? And in a couple weeks this will be a dumb story of the time Justin's meds fucked him up again.**

 **Yeah,** I said. **Okay.**

So...you know. He was still trying to coddle me, and that was not what happened. I didn't look Justin in the eye and talk to him again for over a month.

**

Brian texted me every day during the ordeal, never anything detailed, just, _still having seizures, still alive._ But about a week and a half after it all started, when Justin himself had texted me the day before telling me he was doing a lot better and the worst was behind them now, Brian called me when I was walkng to class. I took off one of my gloves and rooted around my jacket pocket for my phone. “What's wrong?” I said. He never calls me.

“Molly,” he said, and he sounded almost like he was surprised that it was me, which made no sense at all since he'd called me. “Hey. So Justin's sick, okay?”

“What are you talking about?”

“He...he's sick, honey.”

“Why are you calling me that?” It sounded like a joke. Like he was mocking me. That's the only way I can explain it, because it was so super _not_ Brian.

“You need to go home.” His voice was wrong, like he was the one who was sick.

“I'm...on campus, I have class.”

“No, to Pittsburgh, you need to go home to Pittsburgh. Your mom wants you home.”

“That makes...Brian, what the fuck, why does my mom want me in Pittsburgh if Justin's sick here?”

“I don't have time to fucking play she-said she-said with you two,” he snapped. “Your mother wants you home, I want you with someone, can you please not argue with me and just go to the airport. I'll buy your ticket and text you a boarding pass.”

“You're not buying me shit. I'm not leaving the fucking state if something...what is going on with Justin? Let me talk to him.”

“He can't talk right now.”

“Then I'm going to class,” I said, even though I totally wasn't, I was just trying to like...blackmailing Brian or something. Like he would be so upset about me, I don't know, threatening to attend a lecture that he would put Justin on the phone? I know it doesn't make any sense. 

There was a pause, and then he said “Go to your dorm.”

“I'm not—”

“You don't have to go to Pittsburgh, just go be in your fucking dorm until I figure out what to do with you. Shit. I have to go.”

“Brian—” I said, but he was gone. I stood there on that stupid sidewalk and stared at my phone and wondered why the fuck all these people walking past me were just continuing on as if everything was normal. How my fucking world could be coming apart like this and nobody around me could give less of a shit.

That feeling didn't really go away. 

I don't even remember going back to my dorm. I just know at some point I was sitting on my bed still staring at my fucking phone and there was a knock on my door. It was Gwen, still in her scrubs from the animal hospital where she works.

 **Hey,** she said. She held up an empty duffel bag. **Let's pack up everything you need for a little while, okay? Clothes, laptop. Stuff for school.**

**Are we going to Justin's?**

She shook her head. **We think you should come stay with us for a while.**

**You mean Brian thinks.**

She squeezed my arm. **Come on. I'll help you pack. Emily's making a bed for you. You can hang out with the baby.**

She started talking more once we were on the subway. **So I don't know too much,** she said, even though I hadn't asked. I'd just been staring at this stupid poster in front of me. It was some mattress advertisement and it was all these different drawings of different animals lying on mattresses, and I couldn't figure it out. I dont know. Nothing was making sense.

 **Okay,** I said.

**I know Daphne went over there last night.**

**I thought he couldn't have visitors.**

**Brian made an exception, I guess.**

I tilted my head back.

**She said she was going to come over after work and tell us what was going on.**

So she did. Her shift ended and she sat with me on the sheet covering the couch while Emily paced with the baby and Gwen twisted her hands in her lap. She told us that Justin had pneumonia and a high fever and she'd gone over there last night and gotten him oxygen and the strongest antibiotics he wasn't allergic to, and that they couldn't go to the hospital because his immune system wasn't strong enough.

How the fuck does a person get too sick for a hospital? Isn't that like being too dead for a graveyard?

Emily and Gwen asked a lot of questions, how was he when you saw him (mostly asleep), was he scared (no, didn't seem to be), can Brian handle this (yes). Gwen told Emily that we needed to eat, should we order pizza or something, and Emily nodded and gave me the baby and she and Gwen went to another room for a minute, because I guess ordering pizza is some kind of group activity. I sat Jane on my knee and bounced her a little.

Daphne ran a finger down Jane's leg and then said said, softly, “Do you have any questions for me?”

I had nothing but questions, but somehow none of them were turning into words, or signs. I took a deep breath and looked down at the top of Jane's head.

I knew she couldn't hear me, but I still felt like I shouldn't ask if her father was going to live with her sitting right there.

So I just shook my head.

“Okay,” she said. “Well, if you think of anything—” but then the light started flashing in the entryway for their doorbell. Daphne answered the door and Evan was there. Justin's boyfriend. They think I don't know but y'know. 

He was holding a bunch of plastic bags and he said, “Brian told me to come here, I...I brought food, I should cook. Someone should cook for you guys.”

Daphne ushered him in and I went to tell the girls to stop ordering pizza, I guess, and Evan set the bags down on the counter and came over and kissed Jane. He gave me a long look and squeezed my arm but didn't say anything.

We were sitting there in silence, except for Jane, who was banging on the tray of her high chair, eating whatever Evan cooked, I don't remember, but halfway through Daphne's phone started ringing. She checked it, signed Brian's name, and Emily, Gwen, and Evan all waved for her to take it. Daphne held the phone up to her ear. “Hey. Okay, slow down. Can I hear? Just hold the phone...yeah, okay.” She got up and walked a few steps away from the table.

Emily waved her hand at me. **What's going on?**

**Hang on.**

“Yeah, try sitting him up a little. What? No, you can...yeah, you can adjust it. You don't want to do it too high beuase it won't be comfortable and it can actually suppress...yeah, exactly. You can just test it and see how it feels on you. Has he...okay. Yeah, you can keep those coming, it's fine. He needs to—right. Okay. You're on it. Do you want...are you sure. Okay. Okay.”

 **I don't know,** I said to Emily.

“Yeah, that's...do a Benadryl or a Klonopin, something to calm him down.”

 **He's uspet,** I said.

**Brian?**

**No. Justin.**

“Yeah, be reassuring,” Daphne said. “Just calm voice, hands...yeah, well, it's scary. He's going to be scared. No, he doesn't...Brian. No. He doesn't. Listen, I'm at Emily's, I can be there in...okay. All right. Okay. Well...call if you change your mind. Yeah. Send him out love.” She hung up and stayed where she was for a second, and then she turned around and came back to the table. “Okay,” she said. 

**Are you going over?** I said.

**No, Brian doesn't want me going in and out any more than I have to. It's a risk to Justin every time. He's right. Can you pass the potatoes?**

**He's upset?** Evan said.

**He's agitated because he can't breathe well, it's really common. Just a natural response to that.**

Because not being able to breathe is natural, I guess.

But sure. I passed the potatoes. 

**

The next week was this like, excrutiatingly slow blur, if that makes any sense. 

I went to class, sometimes. I lay on the couch a lot. Emily and Evan kept going to work. Emily was staying late all the time trying to keep stuff together at Kinnetik without Brian there. Daphne and Derek and Evan were in and out at weird hours, sitting around playing on their phones, playing endless games of Monopoly with me on the living room floor. Brian barely ever texted us, and he never called anyone but Daphne, but he called her all the time. She said she hadn't been back over there.

I never went back to my dorm. I spent a lot of time just lying on the couch, staring at the ceiling, watching Emily and Gwen have stupid little conversations about regular life, who was going to drop off the dry cleaning, where was Jane's teething ring. They all just...kept living.

 **Why are you always cooking?** I asked Evan one night.

He was slicing up a bell pepper, and at first I thought he wasn't going to answer me, but then he paused and said, “A few years back, when all my friends were getting sick, we all sort of...found jobs to do. Just little things so everyone's loved ones didn't have to worry about stupid shit like cleaning or picking up mail or going to the laundromat...”

**Or cooking.**

“Or cooking, yeah.”

Nobody else in this apartment ever talked to me. Signing at someone who spoke back to me was so fucking familiar.

 **So that's why you're not freaking out,** I said. **You're used to this.**

“I am, yeah.”

He preheated the oven, and I said, **Evan?**

**Yeah?**

**Did your friends...**

He watched me, the world's smallest smile on his lips. He has beautiful eyes. **Some of them are just fine,** he said.

I nodded, and I'd be mad at a lot of people before this whole thing was over, but I was never mad at Evan after that.

**

I was on my back on my couch-bed staring up at the ceiling around 7 PM one evening, but I'd been awake for so long that it felt like the middle of the night, I don't know. Emily and Gwen were in the kitchen, and Jane was on her mat next to me on the floor, banging her doll against the table leg. She had like four stuffed animals spread out around her. People kept buying her toys this week.

I was holding my phone, because I was always holding my phone, and I jumped a little when it buzzed. It was a text from Brian, the first one I'd gotten in days. It just said, _call me alone._

I could hear my heartbeat throbbing somewhere behind my eyes, and everything just kind of shrunk until there was nothing but me and that phone screen, but somehow I calmly got up and walked around the baby and stepped out into the hallway of the apartment building and called him.

His voice was hoarse, tired. “Hey, Molly.”

“If he's dead just tell me.”

“Jesus. He's right here.”

“Okay.”

He cleared his throat. “Do you want to talk to him? I can wake him up.”

“What?” He'd never even offered to have Justin text me, let alone talk to me. And wake him up? “He needs to rest, he...”

“I know, but I think...honey. I think you should talk to him.” 

“Did he ask to talk to me?”

“No, he's not...he doesn't know what's going on.”

My mouth was dry. “He's getting worse. That's what you're saying.”

“He doesn't know,” he said quickly. “He doesn't know that.”

“So what, you want me to lie to him? Tell him everything's going to be fine?”

“I don't need you to tell him anything,” Brian said. “I just think you should talk to him. Talk about the weather, talk about school, talk about whatever the fuck you want.”

“You want me to have some fucking last conversation with him,” I said. “You think I'm going to, what, to have some kind of closure, or going to give him permission to die? I'm not, I'm not going to do that, and fuck you for asking me to. Are you making the rounds with everyone?”

“Just you,” he said quietly.

“Well, I don't want to talk to him. And don't you give me some fucking shit about how I'm going to regret that because he's going to be fine and I already fucking regret _everything_ so you're too goddamn late.”

We were quiet for a while.

“He's waking up,” Brian said eventually. “I have to go.”

“Good. Go.”

I hung up and put my hand on the wall and took a few deep breaths. I could hear voices below me in the stairwell, some girls laughing as they got home, and it all felt so fucking ridiculous, like someone has put them there specifically to make this whole situation feel even more over the top and unreal than it already did. Like, nothing could be that ironic just for no reason. None of this could be for no _goddamn_ reason.

I came back into the apartment. Emily was on the mat with the baby, and she looked up at me with a question in her eyes.

I said, **Is it okay if I take a bath? Does anyone need the bathroom?**

She asked Gwen in the kitchen—for once it was just the three of us there—and then shook her head and told me to go ahead. So I was in the bathtub, rinsing my face with a washcloth and whispering “Okay okay okay,” when I heard Emily make some sort of excited squeak from the living room and both their footsteps rushing around. I scrambled out of the bath tub and wrapped myself in a towel and stumbled out of the bathroom. **What happened?** I said. **What's going on?**

They weren't looking at me. Gwen was rushing around, looking for something, while Emily sat on the floor looing delighted about...the baby. 

**Found it!** Gwen held up her phone. **Will she do it again?**

 **I don't know! Jane. Jane. Who's that?** She pointed at Gwen. **Look, who's that?**

 **God, she is just the best baby,** Gwen said. **This is amazing.**

Emily pulled Jane onto her lap, and when she adjusted herself I guess she finally saw me, because she said, **Oh, Molly...** and Gwen looked over at me.

I crossed my arms.

 **Jane said her first word,** Gwen said.

 **You're celebrating Jane saying her first word,** I said.

They at least had the fucking decency to look ashamed.

 **So what was it?** I said. **What did she say?**

 **Mom,** Emily said.

 **That's good,** I said. **You won't even have to bother teaching her the other one.**

 **Molly,** Emily said, but I shook my head and shut myself in the bathroom for a long time.

**

A few nights later at around ten, maybe a week after I'd come to Emily's, I was sitting on the floor at the coffee table. I'd been staring at the same page in my collected works of Shakespeare for God knows how long, not really absorbing anything. Everyone was there that night: Evan, Derek and Daphne. Nobody was really doing anything. Emily was crying a little and wiping her face like she was pissed at herself. Daphne was between Derek's legs, her eyes closed while he rubbed her shoulders. Evan was curled up under a blanket in the armchair, playing some game on his phone he'd barely looked up from in an hour and twisting his medical bracelet around his wrist.

Nobody had said anything for a long time when Daphne's phone rang. I looked up, and so did everyone else when she fished it out of her pocket. She checked the display and swallowed, and like always everyone nodded, **go go go.**

Daphne picked up the phone and said, “Hey. Whoa whoa whoa, slow down. Brian.” She cleared her throat. “Okay. He said...okay, but he meant—okay. Okay.”

Everyone was watching Daphne's lips, totally still.

“How is he now, what's...Brian. You need to slow down, okay?”

I stared down at All's Well that Ends Well. _There's place and means for every man alive._

“Okay,” Daphne said. “I'm on my way, you need to hold it together until I get there, you understand? You stay in that room with him. Understood? Okay. I'll be there in twenty minutes.” She hung up the phone and went to the hook by the door for her hook.

 **What's going on?** Everyone asked her. **How's Justin, what's happening?**

She said, **I'm sorry, I don't have time, I have to go right now.** She wrapped her scarf around her neck and she was gone.

 **What did she say?** Derek asked me.

I kind of froze, but Evan waved his hand and said, **Brian's upset. I think Daphne's going to take over for him for a little while.** He looked at me. **Right?**

 **I...yeah. I think so.** The book in front of me looked like it was moving. Everything was moving. And I was just staying still.

Emily left and went into her room. Gwen followed her.

Evan said, “Molly, are you okay?”

 **I need to make a phone call,** I said. I got off the floor and stood up. I saw Evan get down on the floor and reach for Derek's hand on my way to the kitchen.

I sat down o the floor in front of the refrigerator and called my mom.

We'd been texting back and forth a lot that week, but I hadn't called her. She kept offering to come to New York, but it didn't really make sense. Her whole support system was in Pittsburgh, and if she came here she'd just be staying at a hotel by herself, and it's not like we could even see Justin. And this whole time I'd felt like having her here would make this whole thing so much more...real. I'd have to manage her feelings and her worry and her signing isn't amazing and just...I don't know. If she was still in Pittsburgh it meant it couldn't really be that bad. And I know that's stupid. I know.

“Molly?” she said. “Molly, honey, what's going on?” She was already crying, and just like that I felt my throat tighten and the top of my mouth start to ache.

“I think he's gonna die,” I said. I pulled my knees up to my chest and hugged them as tight as I could.

“No, no, tell me what's going on,” she said.

“Brian called and he was really upset and Daphne just ran out of here and...Mom, I-I don't think we're ever going to see him again.”

“No,” she said. “No.”

I sat there on the floor and told her I loved her and cried on the phone with her for ages, and then Evan came in and made Justin's shrimp soup for everyone.

**

I was sitting on the floor the next night rolling one of Jane's balls back and forth. No one had heard from Brian since that morning.

Evan handed me a mug and said, “No news is good news.”

 **No news is no news,** I said. **That's all.**

He shrugged a little. **It's just something people say.**

 **If it's good news then that means he's well,** I said. **And I don't think he's well.**

**

But he did get well, as you know. On Saturday I woke up to noise in the kitchen, Emily and Gwen making French toast and Jane banging on the tray of her high chair. Emily waved to be excitedly when I sat up. **Justin's fever's down,** she said. **He's eating. The antibiotics are working.**

 **Daphne's going to go over and check on him after work,** Gwen said. **But Brian said Justin might feel up to calling us for a few minutes after he gets some more sleep. Isn't that amazing?** She pulled Emily under her arm and kissed her cheek.

 **You talked to Brian?** I said.

 **He called about an hour ago,** Gwen said. **We didn't want to wake you, we know you haven't been sleeping much.**

I checked my phone. There was a missed call from Brian from about an hour and a half before, and a few text messages. The most recent one just said, _we did it, molly._

We? I didn't do anything. I sat here in this apartment and made my mother cry.

I looked up when I heard stomping on the floor. **You okay?** Gwen asked me.

 **Oh, yeah. Um...this is great. I'm so glad, oh my God,** I said, and I made all the right noises and the right faces until they started smiling again and I wondered what the goddamn fuck was wrong with me. Because I didn't feel relieved. I wasn't happy. I wasn't...anything.

Daphne came over that evening and said he looked so much better, that his fever was staying down and his breathing was better and he was more alert than he'd been in a week, but he still had a lot of recovery ahead of him and it was going to be a while before he'd be up to having visitors. Daphne had to wear all this protective gear when she'd been in there these past few times, mask and gloves and everything.

Justin texted me _hi,_ sometime that night, and I sat there staring at it for a long time, just his name there at the top of the text, his fingers talking to me, before I typed _hi_ back, and then added _I love you_ in hopes that would get rid of this fucking awful feeling in the pit of my stomach. It didn't.

He actually called the next evening and FaceTimed with Jane. We'd been kind of worried that she wouldn't remember him, but she totally squealed and held up her pink elephant and pointed at the screen over and over.

Emily said, **Molly, come say hi!** but I made up some excuse about studying or not wanting to overwhelm him or distract from the baby and I kept making those excuses every time he called, every single day. And after a week of that, Brian started coming over every evening to see visit with Jane for a little before she went to bed, and he would joke around with the girls and update us on Justin and it's not like I avoided him entirely, but I always found something to be busy with when he was there, a shower I needed to take or dishes I had to do or an essay to write, and I could tell he was catching on and wondering why I was doing it but I didn't even know why I was doing it so what was I supposed to tell him?

Everyone was going back to work. Everyone was laughing. Everyone was back to normal.

Except for me and Justin, a whole borough apart, because I never moved back to my dorm.

**

I woke up one Wednesday the same way I had every morning for the past couple of weeks: to the sound of a baby babbling. Emily and Gwen have a baby monitor that flashes a light when she makes noise, but see, there's thing about flashing lights. They don't really work when you're asleep. So I was always the one to get the baby in the morning. What would they even fucking do without me?

Okay actually, she probably only made any noise at all because she'd figured out that it made people come and get her, and without me here she probably never would have made the association, but...what was I supposed to do, just let her be alone?

I kicked my blanket off of me and got off the couch where I guess I lived now and padded into Jane's room. It has green walls and all these wooden ducks. She was sitting up in her crib, chewing on her fingers, and when she saw me she squawked—did you know Deaf babies are _super loud_ and threw her arms up in the air.

 **Good morning,** I said to her. I picked her up and kissed her cheek. **Are you hungry? I bet you are.**

I brought her to the kitchen and started the coffee for the girls like I do every morning. I texted Justin to tell him good morning and set Janie in her high chair. Emily came in after the coffee was finished, and she kissed the baby and took the mug I handed her.

 **Are you going to class today?** she asked me.

**I don't know.**

She gave me a look.

 **When did you become such a mom?** I asked her.

 **Huh, I don't know,** Emily said, rolling her eyes towards Jane, who was signing **Mom mom mom** since I said it.

Lately I could see it on Gwen and Emily all the time, that they were one sign away from asking me when I was going to get off their couch and go back to my dorm. I knew they wanted me gone. I'd been here for almost a month and I'm not an idiot. 

And I didn't even want to be here, that was the weirdest part. Everytime I watched them get ready for work and cook dinner together and kiss and laugh I would get so goddamn pissed off at them for some reason I couldn't even figure out, but I still didn't want to leave. I didn't know where else to go. And going back to my dorm would just be like...going back in time, or something. It felt impossible. It felt fake.

So I tried to help out with the baby and keep the apartment clean and I paid for groceries sometimes and I tried to keep my bad fucking attitude to myself but I could tell, I could tell I was on thin ice here.

And that's why I said, **I'm going out with some of my friends tonight,** even though I had no such plans. 

She raised her eyerbows.

 **I know I've been...around all the time,** I said. **I thought I should get out of your hair, at least for a few hours.**

 **We're just worried about you,** I said.

**I'm fine.**

She sipped her coffee. **Okay. Well, I'm glad you're going to see your friends. We're going to Facetime with Justin tonight after work if you're here.** She was watching me.

I hadn't talked to him, not once. We both knew it.

 **Sure,** I said. **If I'm here.**

We both knew I wouldn't be.

Gwen came out and the two of them started signing back and forth about Gwen's schedule and these shoes Emily wanted to buy and whether the milk was still good and I watchedt hem like they were a play. 

**

I stood waiting for the train at the aboveground station by Emily and Gwen's apartments, blowing on my hands because my gloves are thin and shitty and it had gotten really cold that week, and most of my good cold weather clothes were still back at my dorm. And because I'd been standing here for twenty minutes and had let two trains go by, because the thought of going to my Shakespeare discussion was for some reason really huge and overwhelming.

I stood there wishing I could decide if I didn't know what was wrong with me or if I didn't know what was wrong with anyone else.

Another train pulled up, and I watched a blonde woman in a black pea coat step forwards into the yellow bar at the edge of the track. I imagined her jumping in front of the train, the blood. She'd be gone in a blur, probably too fast for us to see any blood. She'd just be here one second and then totally gone, just wiped off this planet without a fucking trace. No thoughts, no feelings. That's the difference between being a person and being a nothing. A second and a couple inches.

A pidgeon tugged a fry out of a trash can. 

I got on the train.

**

All my classes lately had been kind of...blurry. It's like when the teachers talk in Charlie Brown. That's what everyone's voices sound like.

I always sat next to this girl whose name I think I used to know, and her hair was always flat-ironed and she always had eyeliner on at nine in the morning and she smelled like daisies and I was just fascinated by her, because who has that kind of time? Who has the focus for things like that? And she was always so prepared for class, too. She used regular pencils and they were always perfectly sharpened and she always had a spare one sitting on her desk in front of her just in case. Who was this girl? Who were these people?

“Molly,” my TA said, when we were packing up to go. “Can I speak with you for a minute?”

I hate questions you can't say no to, because Jesus, would I have said no to that one. I dragged my feet to the front of the room as the classroom cleared out. 

“What's going on with you?” she said.

“Um...nothing?”

“You've missed the past two discussion sessions.”

“I'm here now.”

“You didn't participate. Your last paper wasn't at all up to your usual standards. Is something wrong?”

“No.”

“Are you having trouble keeping up in your classes?”

“Everything's fine,” I said. “I guess I've just been busy.”

She studied me for a long time and finally sighed. “Okay. Well, I hope to see you next week, then.”

I left the building and sat on a bench outside and felt the cold bite at my cheeks. Justin sent me a text about the TV show he was watching. My mom asked me if I was coming home for Thanksgiving or was I going to spend it with Justin. 

I watched the people walk past me and tilted my head back and looked up at the sky. 

**

So I didn't actually have plans that night with friends, but I went to a bar where a lot of students hang out, so it wasn't a surprise that after two whiskey cokes I heard someone go, “Taylor! Hey, Taylor!” It was Eric, this guy who lived in my dorm and who I'd had a few classes with and slept with a time or two. He was sitting with a group of people who I sort of vaguely knew in that way where you could pick them out of a police lineup but you didn't know their names. But they had a pitcher of something, so that was enough for me. I sat down and shook a plastic cup off the stack. 

“We're drinking to forget our Calc midterm,” Eric said.

“Well, they are,” this one girl (Samantha? Sarah? I fingerspelled some possibilities under the table but none of them felt right) said. “I'm drinking to forget my stupid boyfriend.”

That set them off, and they all started talking over themselves trying to explain the problem what whatshername's shitty boyfriend, and I listened vaguely and finished my margarita and finished another one and when Jamie Jaylee Jacey (Janie?) was talking about how she hadn't gotten dick in months and I was applauding myself on not saying _well at least that means you won't end up pregnant or getting your nose broken_ but then L...something was bitching that his parents weren't giving him enough money for this ski vacation they said they were going to send him on and I did say, without really meaning to, “Can I ask you a question?” in that way that words kind of fall out of your mouth after five drinks. 

I guess I didn't sound very innocent, because L-whoever immediately looked all suspicious and was like, “Okaaaaaay.”

“Why does any of this matter?” I said. “Like when you look at this objectively, if you really...if you like squint real hard and look at these little problems you all are having, who _fucking_ cares?”

Eric said, “What the fuck's with you?” 

“I just want to know if you guys are aware that there are people out there with actual goddamn fucking problems,” I said. “It's a simple question, yes or no, I just want to know if you know that you are fucking whiny specks in a universe where people are actually having life or death shit going on and you're worried about Vail or your fucking dick appointments. Don't bother, don't bother, I'm leaving, keep your fucking 'look at the crazy' chick looks to yourself, I'm going. Oh and fuck all of you by the way.”

The train ride to Queens would have taken forever, so I ended up getting into a cab and taking it back to Emily and Gwen's. The apartment was mostly dark, but Emily and Gwen were on the couch watching a movie or something, looking all fucking cozy. Emily paused the TV while I went into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water that I drank in about five second, then refilled. 

She came into the kitchen and gave me a once-over. **Are you okay?**

**I'm great.**

**You're trashed.**

**Yeah, well, why shouldn't I be?** I started rooting around the cabinet for cookies.

**Because it's a school night, and you were wandering by the city by yourself, and because you're tracking mud into my kitchen.**

I slammed the cabinet shut. **Can I ask you something?** I asked, because, you know, apparently I was on a fucking roll tonight. 

**Sure.**

**How are you fine?**

**What?**

**Justin almost died,** I said. **He almost died in his fucking apartment two weeks ago, and everyone's all fixed and back to normal. And I would just like to know how the fuck that is, because I would like to be fixed and back to normal now. I would like to not be lying awake still planning the speech I was going to give at his fucking funeral, but I can't, I can't _stop_ , and I just want to know how you're so fucking fine with the fact that your supposed best friend almost stopped existing, that your baby almost never saw her father again, how is that just _fine?_ What the fuck kind of person are you actually?**

Gwen came in somewhere in the middle of that, I don't know.

Emily said, **Okay, you're drunk, I'm not doing this with you right now.**

 **It's not like I haven't been thinking this the whole fucking time!** I said. **Even before we knew he was going to be okay, you two kept living your little normal lives, so I don't why it's a surprise to me that it's over and now you're fine. You and Brian are just going to hang out with the baby and laugh and tell jokes like my brother's not still goddamn on oxygen, like he couldn't get sick again _any second,_ like you didn't just fucking live through...anything. None of this was anything to you, was it? Do you even care about him?**

Gwen said, **Molly, you should go to bed,** but I'd gotten to Emily, I could tell. Good.

 **Of course I care about him,** she said. **I've been keeping Brian's entire fucking company above water so he could focus on Justin, so don't act like I haven't been doing my part for this family.**

**Family? What family. This isn't your fucking family. My brother fucks you a few times to get you pregnant, you think you're family?**

Gwen said, **Okay, we're going to put this on hold until tomorrow.**

 **Stay out of it,** I told her. I turned back to Emily. **When Justin was dying, Brian called me so I could say goodbye to him. Did he call you?**

She narrowed her eyes.

 **You're not his fucking family,** I said. **You've known him for five years, don't stand there like that means something.**

Emily said, **All right, you know what?** and I was so ready to be yelled at. I was so scared and I wanted it so goddamn much; I was so ready to fucking feel something.

But Gwen put her hand on Emily's arm and said, **Stop,** to her.

**If you think I'm going to let some twenty-year-old straight girl tell me what family is—**

**She's drunk and upset,** Gwen said. **God knows she has a right to be. Let it go.**

Emily shook her head and left the kitchen, and Gwen stood there looking so goddamn much like my mom when she'd say _I just don't_ understand _you, Molly,_ and I put my head down.

But she just said, **Get some sleep.**

**

At least I don't get hangovers.

I pretended I didn't hear the baby in the morning and hid under my blanket like a coward until all three of them were gone, and then threw on the first clothes I could find and grabbed a granola bar on my way out the door and still somehow made it to my philosophy lecture on time. I was sitting there trying to listen and take notes and act like a competent student or human being, and then halfway through the lecture the door opened and Brian strolled in like he owned the lecture hall, and my heart fell just about down to my feet.

My professor stopped mid-sentence and said, “Um, excuse me—”

“One second.” Brian scanned the rows of students, eyes narrowed, and when he saw me signed, **Come on, you're excused.**

Everyone's head twisted to me.

 **Justin?** I managed to say.

He shook his head, his eyes gentle. **Justin's fine. Come on.**

I stuffed my textbook and my notebook into my tote bag and scooted past some people and down the center aisle and Brian held the door for me and we left. “What the fuck?” I asked him. “What's going on?”

“We need to talk.”

“I was in class!”

“Yeah, but I had free time now, and I care more about my schedule than your...whatever that was. Come on, I came all the way back to Manhattan for you. Have you eaten?”

“No.”

“I'll buy you a bagel.”

**

We got bagels and hot chocolate and ate them on a bench in Washington Square Park. I watched women walk by with strollers, laughing quietly with each other. A little kid ran by crying that he'd lost his mitten, and his dad scooped him up. 

Brian seemed to be in no fucking hurry to explain to me why he'd pulled me out of class. He crossed his foot over his knee and chewed on his onion bagel and sipped from his cup and tilted his face back to take in the sun. 

Eventually I couldn't take it any more.”Did the girls send you to throw me out?”

“No one's throwing you out.”

“I was a total bitch to Emily last night.”

“So I heard.”

I dropped my chin into my hand and stared straight ahead. “So they did call you.”

“They're worried about you. They're lesbians. It's what they do.”

“Mmm.”

“And I'm sick of making excuses to Justin about why you won't talk to him. Eventually he's going to worry too.” He paused. “He'll be joining an illustrious crew.” 

“What, you don't have enough to worry about?”

“I do,” he said easily. “So let's get this sorted out and check a thing off my list.” 

I scuffed my shoes on the ground. 

“Have you thought about talking to someone?” 

I snorted. “What, like a therapist?”

“Sure, there are campus resources I'm sure. I can help you set something up.”

“I don't know.”

“Justin likes his. He's climbing the walls until he's healthy enough to Skype with her. So to speak. Can't really climb walls either right now. Kind of an army-crawing the walls sort of deal.”

“How the fuck are you joking about this?”

He shrugged. “Gotta do something. He hates talking around it, acting like it didn't happen. So do I. And if you cry too much you get dehydrated, that's no good.”

“You're still joking.”

“You know who won't joke? A therapist. She'd be all understanding and serious.”

“I don't know why I have to see a therapist when I'm the one who's being fucking normal. It's everyone else who's acting like our lives didn't just almost fucking explode. They're all fine.” I looked up at him. “Are you fine?”

He kept eye contact. “I'm okay.”

_”How?”_

He laughed a little. “Your guess is as good as mine. I don't know. I wasn't in the same situation you were. I wasn't sitting around waiting and hoping for a text every day, I was there, I could help. I know Taylors. They really don't cope well with not being able to do anything.”

“So that's the only difference, you were with him?”

He groaned a little. “I don't know. I like taking care of him, is that a crime?”

“This wasn't ordinary taking care of him.”

“Yeah, but it's not just...Okay. I wasn't just with him. He was with me.”

“What the fuck are you talking about?”

He groaned some more. “He was with me. It wasn't like I was doing it alone, or taking care of some fucking stranger. Yeah, he was out of it and asleep a lot and he wasn't the most himself that he's ever been. But he was there. He was with me. I...work well with Justin.”

“It's not exactly easy work.”

He rubbed his forehead. “It's not...God. Okay. It's like I have two categories of things, all right?”

“Okay.”

“I have hard, and I have...for Justin.”

I watched him. 

“Come on, you know what I'm saying,” he said. “I'd fucking...I'd swim the East River, I'd swim the fucking...it's for Justin.”

“God,” I said. “You really love him.”

“Well, keep your voice down. He still thinks I keep him around for his shrimp scampi.”

“I don't know how to be okay anymore,” I said. “I'm so fucking scared.”

“Yeah, we're all scared. It's scary.”

“You don't seem scared.”

“I'm waking up next to him every morning. He's there, he's coughing all over me, I know he's okay.” He paused. “So why won't you see him?”

“He can't see anyone.”

“You hide when he calls the baby.”

“I don't...”

He waited.

“Are you mad at him?” he asked after a minute.

“What kind of a bitch would I be to be mad at my brother for amost dying,” I said.

“Well...you'd be mad at him for scaring the shit out of you.” He watched me. “I get mad at him sometimes.”

“What do you do?”

“Write letters and flush them down the toilet. Sometimes I just scream.”

“Smart.”

He shrugged. “As long as it doesn't bother him it doesn't really matter what I do. It's just about...not putting it on him. You figure out ways that don't hurt him.”

“I'm not hurting him.”

“No. But you can't avoid him forever.”

“How do you get over it? Being mad? The letters do it?”

“He didn't do anything wrong,” Brian said. “Be upset for a while, sure, but at some point if you're mad at him for this you're just mad at him for not dying.”

I didn't say anything.

“And...okay, Molly. Normally I'd just say, look, you take care of this shit for however long you need to take care of it, come deal with it when you've got your shit put together.” 

“But he's going to figure out I'm avoiding him.”

“No, this isn't about him. You have to be on top of this stuff. You have to be more careful than most people do because this shit, depression and stuff, this runs in your family. You have to be on top of this. The people who care about you, they have to be on top of it.”

I gave him a sappy look. “You care about me.”

“Jesus, I meant Emily and Gwen.”

I rested my head on his shoulder.

“So you'll talk to someone?” he said. “That's my reward for this display?”

“Yeah, I guess.”

“Good.”

“Except I still don't know how to talk to Justin.”

He thought for a minute. “Come by Kinnetik tonight. Around eight. I might have an idea.” He tossed his bagel wrapper at the trash.

**

Emily got home with the baby at around seven-thirty, right when I was about to go. **Hey, I'm sorry, I know I need to talk to you,** I said. **But I have to run and meet Brian.**

 **I know, he told me. Here.** She moved Janie into my arms.

**No, I—**

**I know what's going on, I work with Brian. Take the baby with you.**

**Brian wants me to bring her?**

**Yes. Now go, before you're late.**

I stared at her.

 **Come on, what?** she said.

**You're helping me fix things and you're letting me stay here and I've been such a bitch to you.**

**Yeah, well,** she said. **That's what family is. Now go.**

**

Brian was just closing up the office when I got there. **Hey, there you are.** He took Jane out of my arms and held her up. **Wow, look how tall.**

**Emily said I was supposed to bring her.**

**Emily was right. Come on.**

**Where are we going?**

He looked at me. **You're feeling all right?**

**You mean besides the crushing feeling of despair?**

**Yeah, no colds, no cough, no fever.**

I swallowed. “We're going to see Justin?”

 **How about you?** he asked Jane. **You feeling okay?**

**I thought he couldn't have visitors.**

**Yeah, he can't,** Brian said. **Which is why you're only going to stay for a few minutes, you're going to wear a mask and gloves, so's he, and you're going to stay five feet away from him at all times.**

“I...”

 **And it's not going to be awkward,** Brian said. **Because he's going to be so excited to see the baby that he's barely going to fucking notice you're there. Once again, I'm a genius. Come on.** He kissed her cheek and hoisted her up on his hip. **Let's get a move on. You didn't bring a fucking stroller? Jesus.**

**

Brian opened the front door of the apartment and immediately pointed to a bottle of hand sanitizer by the door. He rubbed his hands briskly and said, “Do her hands too. Gloves here...masks here. I'll go get him.” 

“How come you don't have to wear a mask?”

“I'm immune to the diseases of mortals,” he said over his shoulder on his way to the bedroom.

 **Okay, Jane,** I said, rubbing up her arms with sanitizer. **We need to not make Dad sick, okay? It's important.**

She watched me.

 **You're going to do great,** I told her. **I have to put this weird thing on now,** I said, and I put a mask over my nose and mouth and pulled on gloves.

Brian came out of the bedroom a minute later, his hand under Justin's elbow. Justin was still half-asleep and rubbing his eyes, and his mask covered half of his face, but you still couldn't miss his smile when he saw us. 

**Remember, no touching,** Brian said. **I mean it.**

Justin nodded and lowered himself to the couch. 

**You good?** Brian asked.

Justin nodded again, his eyes still on us. **Hi,** he said.

I took a deep breath. **Hi. You look good.**

 **I look like shit,** he said.

 **Yeah, you look like shit,** I said, and we both laughed a little bit.

 **Can I see her?** he said.

I nodded and set her down on the rug, and she crawled cautiously towards Justin. The mask probably freaked her out, but she didn't stop.

 **No touching,** Brian said, leaning against the wall.

 **I know, I know,** Justin said. He pulled his legs up to his chest and watched her. **Hi, Jane.**

Jane looked up at him and said, **Dad,** and Brian slipped his arm around my shoulders.


End file.
